Cool Thing Of The Week: France

Howdy folks! It's been awhile since I've brought your last Cool Thing Of the Week, and that's because I've been in France, where permission to board the Internets costs anywhere from 2-8 Euro an hour. So for this update, I'd thought I'd share all my musings about our old friend France. To be specific, I was in St. Jean de Luz (Basque country) in the south, and it's a tiny little town that plays host to French tourists during the summer.

• This is somethings I've noticed in alot of countries that aren't the USA, but in France, it takes a long time to get almost anything done. Meals, airport check-ins, everything except trains, which are refreshingly quick and punctual.
• Speaking of meals, there's no concept of turning tables. During the evening, a restaurant will seat all its tables, and then usually close down. Combined with the fact that waiters are on salary and don't rely on tips, and you find that dining is a drawn out experience. Which isn't bad at all. In fact, usually it's quite lovely.
• I don't think I've ever eaten so much bread in my entire life. It doesn't help that nothing opens before 7:30, and nothing serves anything other than baguette, crepes, or pastry before lunch.
• French is hard. I got along just fine, and it's amazing how far a little can get you, but French slang is a ridiculous combination of "Hey let's arbitrarily swap the subject and the verb!" and not using correct tenses. Fuck that. I already speak one overly convoluted language that makes no goddamn sense, and that one I learned by speaking it since birth.
• On the other hand, the Spanish I heard might as well have been dialogs out of a textbook. Definitely got to file that as the easier language.
• For a country that abhors the idea of mixing it up, France loves to parade its military around. Most monuments had a trio of soldiers armed with FAMAS rifles patrolling around. The effect is somewhat diminished as the weapons didn't have magazines seated.

This is a work in progress, and will grow as I think of more things/get more time. Feel free to chime in with your own experiences.